


(How Am I Supposed to Pretend) I Never Want to See You Again

by AithuzahFic (veritably_mad)



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-01-25 23:34:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1666589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veritably_mad/pseuds/AithuzahFic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Knowing your roommate would turn out to be obnoxious was one thing. Experiencing it every day was, unfortunately, much more painful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(How Am I Supposed to Pretend) I Never Want to See You Again

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Vampire Weekend's "Campus."
> 
> Inspired by [this prompt](http://otpprompts.tumblr.com/post/84973350378/imagine-your-otp-sleeping-on-bunk-beds-person-b), which I'm 99.9% sure was inspired by [ this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXp2ruZoxK8).
> 
> Brit-picked by [mixtureoffandom](http://mixtureoffandom.tumblr.com/), beta'd by [Katie](http://teatimetraveler.tumblr.com/).

Knowing your roommate would turn out to be obnoxious was one thing. Experiencing it every day was, unfortunately, much more painful.

 _It's his face_ , Arthur thought. He'd thought it when he first met his roommate of the next several months of his life and had recognized him as a trial to be endured rather than a friend to be made, and then again several times after as he tried to pinpoint what about him sent out those waves of  _escape while you can, I will ruin your life_. 

Something about his face, guileless one moment and shifty as a first-time thief the next. He was the worst liar Arthur had ever met, but attempting to ascertain the truth only led to babbling, then long moments of staring into wide blue eyes, which led to Arthur feeling discomfited and irritable, which led to his roommate getting away with whatever rubbish he had just spouted to explain the broken lamp or the burnt sheets (seriously though,  _what?)_  or any of the other disasters of the week.

 _Definitely_  his ears. Arthur found himself wanting to tug them or rub the shell of them lightly, perhaps, far too often for his peace of mind. Arthur put that down to their size and decided he could not be blamed for any odd urges regarding their abrupt and blatant presence in his life.

And his voice, of course, and everything he used it to say. Telling Arthur off for antagonizing a first year during move-in, for instance, though being cheated out of one's rightful lodgings would put anyone in a foul mood and nothing he had said should be held against him, even if it  _had_  made him sound like, er, "a spoiled infant who'd been reading the Urban Dictionary," as some might suggest. 

His name, which made Arthur think that the "filing error" or whatever bullshit excuse the housing administrators had given him was, in fact, a lie they had invented to cover up their lame joke. Yes, yes, Arthur and Merlin rooming together is  _hilarious_  because they're  _just like the king and the_   _wizard_ , it must be destiny. Ha bloody ha, joke told, can Arthur please room with Leon now? (The answer to that, Arthur had learned, was a firm  _No,_ and Arthur went back to giving Leon and Owen's door longing looks every time he passed it.)

In short, Merlin Emrys was a package deal of annoyances, and Arthur wished his instincts had been wrong just this once.

 

[7:12 Thursday, 26 September]

_"Oh what a beautiful moooooorning, oh what a beautiful daaaayyyyyyy..."_

A month into first term, and Merlin had abandoned all meager semblance of roommate propriety he had attempted in the first week or so. After the move-in confrontation, once they had realized what an ordeal it would be to begin their year hating each other, they had apologized ("I'm sorry for acting like a prat earlier." "Well, I'm not sorry for calling you out on it." " _Mer_ lin." "Fine. I'm sorry for calling you an entitled arse." "I don't remember that one." "Really? Must have been thinking it.") and kept their distance as much as possible while living in shared quarters. That plan fell apart when they found that they had a mutual friend in Gwen, Merlin was taking a bio course with Arthur's footie mate Lance, and Gwaine hit it off with Merlin the first time Arthur brought him round to play BioShock. Arthur's friends became Merlin's friends, Merlin's friends became Arthur's wary acquaintances, and Merlin and Arthur became...something.

Merlin infiltrated his days far more than Arthur had ever expected or wanted him to, from studying together in the library after classes to eating with the same people, and Arthur still wasn't sure what to make of it. 

Now, instead of staying quiet and letting Arthur rest, Merlin found a way to drag his poor, innocent, sleep-deprived bunkmate into wakefulness. Sometimes it was his noisy brand of clumsiness (dropped books and muffled curses, stubbed toes and not-so muffled curses), or a stream of inane questions. Others it was... _singing._

_"I've got a wonderful feeling, everything's going my way..."_

One pillow jammed over his head wasn't enough to block out Merlin's slightly-off-key voice. Two dulled it enough for Arthur to ignore it. Barely.

Hangers screeched as Merlin dragged them along the closet rail. _"Ohhhhhh what a beautiful mooooooooooooooorning..."_

If Merlin didn't know the rest of the words to the song, he would sing the chorus again in different ways while Arthur imagined  _killing_  him in different ways, fledgling friendship be damned. He usually pictured smothering him with a pillow to start with, then went from there. 

A drawer slammed shut. _"...eeeeeverything's going myyy - "_

Arthur could feel a headache building behind his eyes. He had stayed up late last night working on an economics report with too many graphs and tables, and now he was being serenaded with musicals an hour before he needed to be awake. He rolled onto his back.

_"Merlin!"_

"...way?" Merlin trailed off, confused, and the rustling and shuffling of his morning routine stilled. "What?"

"Tell me," Arthur said, as patiently as he could bear, "a few minutes ago, did I seem awake to you?" 

Merlin had told Arthur before that his "polite and patient" often came across as "condescending and supercilious," and from his expression now, he continued to be unimpressed with Arthur's efforts. "Erm. No. You were snoring, actually."  

Arthur shoved himself upright to better defend against such an outrageous accusation. "I do  _not_  - " He cut himself off when he saw Merlin's lips pressed together, suppressing laughter, and he resigned himself to a huff and a glower before continuing to make his point. He shifted to lean against the wall, cool against his bare back, as he looked out at the room where Merlin stood extracting papers from his desk, which resembled Mount Everest in size, color, and danger levels. "Do you happen to think I'm deaf, then?"

Merlin snorted. "Obviously not," he said, then muttered something under his breath as he tugged a textbook from the base of the paper mountain. Miraculously, the entire thing did not collapse on itself, though Arthur kept a dubious eye on it.

"Right. Did you hear my alarm go off?"

"No." Merlin spun to face him, leather-banded wrists crossed over the band logo on his t-shirt. "Arthur, where are you going with this?"

"Oh, I thought I'd get my facts straight before I remind you -  _again_  - that I don't appreciate listening to what sounds like a dying cat when I am trying to sleep in the mornings, that's all." Well, that was an exaggeration. Merlin didn't have a terrible voice. It could sound quite nice, really, smooth and deeper than you might expect from looking at him - but not at 7 in the morning. 

Merlin's expression snapped right out of confused suspicion and into annoyance. "Maybe I don't appreciate listening to what sounds like a rusty chainsaw when I'm trying to get ready for the day," he retorted, and went right back to shifting through his papers. 

"I do not snore!" Arthur protested. Merlin gave him a patronizing smile, but didn't answer. Arthur did  _not_ pout at that, any more so than he snored. Which was never. (Nor did he stare too long at the way Merlin's jeans hung onto slim hips, or notice how his dark hair curled a little bit in front of his ears and framed sharp cheekbones. No one saw it, no one can prove it, it never happened.)

He waited for his roommate to start singing again out of spite, but Merlin remained silent. Arthur didn't trust the quiet. 

"Not going to sing anymore, are you?" he asked, wary.

"Well, you're awake now," Merlin said and flashed Arthur a grin over his shoulder. "As long as you don't talk, I don't need to sing to block you out."

To Arthur's satisfaction, the pillow hit Merlin squarely on the back of his head. To his dismay, it bounced onto Mt. Everdesk and created an avalanche that coated the floor, and Merlin demanded he help clean it up. 

 

[7:49 Tuesday, 15 October]

"Arthur."

"Mmf."  

"Arthurrrr. I want waffles."

"Nnnrg." 

"Do you think I'd be able to make them in a microwave?"

At too-fucking-early o'clock in the morning, with Arthur's consciousness being pried away from deep sleep, that question spurred a vivid half-dream of Merlin's manic grin, a violent explosion, and batter dripping down the walls. He didn't know how it would happen, but experience with the aftermath of Hurricane Merlin told him that it somehow would anyway.

 _"No._ "

"First real word of the day! Congrats."

The mattress creaked, and Arthur didn't need to open his eyes to know that Merlin had shifted on his bed so his feet hook onto the rail and he could dangle half his torso off the side like an oversize, moronic monkey. Arthur burrowed under his covers. He had already woken up to Merlin's upside-down face too many times.

"Don't hide! I need you to make eggy bread since you won't let me try it myself."

"You said you wanted waffles," Arthur grumbled, and rolled toward the wall. Anything that put distance between Arthur and a morning person was a good thing, particularly when that morning person liked to hum tunelessly and beg for an elaborate breakfast despite only having pot noodle and marmite in the room.  _Does he do this on purpose?_ Arthur wondered through the clinging haze of dreams.  _Did he pester his last roommate to death? Is that why he needed a new one? Or am I just special?_

"Did I? See, this is why you have to help me."

"Or I could sleep in and skip breakfast, like a normal uni student."

Something soft but heavy landed on Arthur's head and he jerked upright, scowling at the stuffed gold-green dragon that had assaulted him. 

"Kilgharrah says that just because  _you_  do something, that doesn't make it normal," Merlin announced, but when Arthur looked up to aim the beast back at him, he was no longer dangling over the side or even on the top bunk anymore. He'd settled in at Arthur's desk -  _Arthur's_ , since he had avoided any unnecessary contact with his own ever since last month's avalanche and Arthur's was at least somewhat clear - and was holding a paper plate stacked with American pancakes.

"Those are not waffles  _or_  eggy bread," Arthur blurted, which happened to be the least important thing to comment on when the other things were  _when did he get off the bed_ and  _how_ and _where the hell did he even get pancakes so fast?_

Merlin shrugged and said, "They didn't have them," as if that answered everything, when, in fact, it answered nothing at all. He had to be lying or hiding  _something_ , but none of Arthur's theories about why or what for made sense even in his own head. Was someone selling breakfast out of their dorm room? Had Merlin hidden a stash in the dark and unknown recesses of his closet? He must have gotten them before he decided to pester Arthur into wakefulness with an elaborate ruse designed to make Arthur question his sanity. 

"Come on, have some. Most important meal of the day! You shouldn't skip it." 

Suspicions aside, Merlin's eyes were doing that thing where they look big and blue and  _annoying,_  so he accepted the offered food with an eye roll but no further questions. 

 

[9:37 Saturday, 9 November]

Arthur had flailed out of bed and landed on the floor before he even registered what had woken him up. Kicking his feet to untangle his legs from the sheets, he looked around the room - a chair had been knocked onto its side, that must have been it - and up at where Merlin crouched on his bunk, biting his lower lip while his hand hovered in the air as if he could have caught the chair before it fell (and how did that happen, exactly?). 

Merlin looked down at him. "Arthur!" he said, his voice pitched higher than usual. He cleared his throat. "Erm. Morning." He dropped his hand to his knee and then immediately lifted it again to rub the back of his neck. "I was...redecorating."

"From your bunk." It was difficult to give someone a proper tilted-head raised-eyebrow look of utter disbelief while sitting on your arse in a mess of sheets below them, but Arthur thought he got the general idea across.

"Yes. Well. No. I mean, I was  _down there_  redecorating, but then I got tired, and got back into bed. And then a chair fell over because it was off balance because of the way I'd positioned it while redecorating."

Arthur glanced around at the room. None of Merlin's geeky posters had been moved so much as an inch, the cupboards hadn't budged from their positions framing the window, both desks seemed exactly as they did the night before, and even the clothes strewn over the floor looked as random as ever. (Maybe, if Merlin was in the mood for "redecorating" as he claimed, Arthur would  _politely suggest_  that he clean up the mess.) The only significant difference was that Arthur's chair had been pulled out from his desk and overturned. He blinked.

"It's too early to listen to your nonsense," he declared, and climbed back into his own bed. Saturday mornings were made for sleeping. "Just...keep it down. No more redecorating. Read, or listen to music  _with headphones,_ or whatever it is you do when you aren't being a nuisance." As rare as that was, it did happen  _occasionally._

Five minutes passed in silence. (Arthur had learned to take the restless creaking and rustling as part of his definition of silence. If he hadn't, he would have committed murder months ago.) Then the muttering started. Unintelligible, hissing syllables and guttural consonants, and since when was Merlin taking a foreign language course? It wasn't even a language Arthur recognized. He nudged the bottom of Merlin's mattress with his feet until he found the heavier point, where Merlin sat, and kicked hard. He heard a yelp.

"Do you need a dictionary?" he asked. "Having trouble finding the word 'quiet'? It's right by 'quite,' as in 'quite irritating,' which is what you are. Or you could Google it. This is the Internet age, after all."

"Sorry," Merlin said. He wasn't sorry. Arthur could tell by his tone, and he kicked him again for good measure. "Ow! Alright, fine, arsehole, I'll be quiet."

He wasn't quiet, either. The hissing noises started up again, softer but still plainly audible, and Arthur decided drastic measures were necessary. Stepping on his mattress, he grabbed the rail of Merlin's bunk to heft himself up and swung his pillow as a bludgeon to collide with Merlin's face. Muffled cursing emanated from where Merlin had toppled over, and Arthur got in one more good  _thwack_  before he let himself drop to the floor and rolled under his quilt. 

"Owwww," Merlin complained belatedly, more annoyed than injured. Arthur could imagine his scowl - the crumpled brow, the pout. Unlike Arthur, Merlin pouted quite frequently, and it was alternately frustrating and adorable. It may or may not have influenced several of Arthur's decisions and actions in the past. Merlin could  _never know_  that it worked, or disaster would befall the world, Arthur was sure of it. He made sure to cave only with a great deal of eye-rolling and insults to deter Merlin from further use of the pout.

Chances of falling asleep before he needed to be up for the day anyway were slim, but Arthur tried nevertheless. Squirming and rolling until he lay sprawled across the bed on his stomach, he settled with one foot kicked out over the side, an arm wedged into the crack between the wall and his mattress, and the sheets pooling at the small of his back. He buried his head under his pillow, in case Merlin forgot that he wasn't the only person in the room and started talking to himself. Again.

He heard the muffled "Oh,  _shit"_  before he smelled the distinct odor of burning fabric, recognizable from the month before when -  _oh, shit._

Merlin had set his sheets on fire.

When Arthur hauled himself on a level with Merlin's bunk with a half-empty bottle of water in hand, Merlin was on his knees beating the flames with his pillow one-handed while clutching an old, tattered book to his chest. Must have been a special request from the library, though why anyone would entrust Merlin with something valuable when things like  _this_  were a regular occurrence for him was a mystery to Arthur. 

"How the hell did you manage to do this twice?" Arthur dumped the contents of the bottle on the fire, and the combination of water and Merlin's flailing finally made the last flames peter out. "I thought I'd confiscated everything that you could possibly create a spark with after the last time." There hadn't been much to confiscate - a cheap blue lighter with a silver dragon on the side Merlin claimed was a gift from his mate Will being the most significant item in the box Arthur had hidden while Merlin stepped out of the room - but obviously he had missed something, or Merlin was far more creative and more of a pyromaniac than Arthur gave him credit for.

"I'm talented like that," Merlin said with a halfhearted chuckle and a wary glance at his stuffed dragon, which was tucked safely between his knee and the wall. The thought of a lighter hidden in Kilgharrah passed through Arthur's head, and he decided to investigate later, when Merlin wasn't around to be indignant at him. Merlin sat back on his heels. His hold on the pillow loosened, but his shoulders were still curled in, like he could protect the book he still clung to better that way. "Merlin the magical, that's me."

"Cursed is more like it," Arthur said, snorting. He yanked the ruined top sheet up and tossed it over his shoulder. "Or I'm the one who's cursed, having to put up with you. You're lucky the alarm didn't go off, by the way. That would have been a real mess." On second thought, it probably wasn't a good thing that the fire alarm had not detected the fire.

"Right." Merlin seemed to remember the book in his arms, and he shoved it behind him with a wide grin at Arthur. "Thanks for the help! I'll just, you know, wash those. Or buy new sheets. Damn, I have to buy new sheets, don't I?" His expression crumpled into worry, and there was that damn pout, all pitiful and vulnerable.

Arthur heaved a dramatic, put-upon sigh and wondered when he had gone from _"_ _Where can I go in the library so Merlin can't find me?"_ to contemplating buying him a new set of bed sheets (deep blue, to go with pale skin and dark eyes) to keep him from fretting. "I  _suppose_  I can let you use my spare set," he said, and when Merlin perked up he waved a stern warning finger at his face. "But no matches, lighters, candles, incense,  _anything_. No food or drinks that could stain, either." 

"Yes, sire." The title was usually a joke, started the first time Arthur had commanded Merlin to clean up his own mess, but this sounded sincere. Arthur believed that he would, at least,  _try_  to avoid making a mess of his things. Whether he would succeed or not was another story.

 

[9:02 Sunday, 1 December]

"Hey, Arthur?"

Arthur groaned. Leon had taken him to an off-campus party the night before and he had stumbled back to his room far later than he had intended. His head throbbed, and he wished he had accepted Leon's offer to take the free bed while Owen was home for the weekend. "What is it, Merlin?"

"Do you ever get homesick?"

Arthur thought of his father's stiff back and reserved smile, of matching furniture sets and dark wood paneling, of tense silences and relieved laughter. He loved his home and his father, but he didn't miss them, not like that. Not yet.

"Do you?" Merlin repeated. The mattress creaked as he rolled to the edge.

"Just let me sleep," Arthur mumbled instead of giving a proper answer. "Please. Just a few more hours." 

"Do you ever think about - I mean, do you ever wonder if our parents miss us?"

"You call your mum every day, I don't think she's had the chance to miss you." Merlin knew Arthur was on his own with his father, just as Arthur knew that all Merlin had was his mother, who took a much more active interest in her son's extracurricular activities than Uther did. As long as Arthur did well in his classes, Uther was - well, not  _happy_ , but satisfied. Arthur shoved his arms beneath his pillow on either side of his head so he could curl it up to cover his ears. "Now stop worrying and shut up."

Merlin fidgeted, tugging his quilt over him before shoving it back. At last, the movement and the sounds stilled. Arthur drifted, felt himself sink back into sleep.

"Hey, Arthur - "

"MERLIN. SHUT THE FUCK UP."

"As your highness commands, Prince Prat."

Arthur could always hope, but - of course any apparent obedience on Merlin's part wouldn't last. A few blissfully restful minutes passed, and then:

"Do you think pigeons have feelings?" 

"I'll give you one last chance to shut the hell up and go back to sleep,  _Mer_ lin, before I  _help_ you go to sleep."

"How? Singing me a lulla - "

Arthur was out of bed and beating Merlin over the head with his pillow before he could finish his question. Being quick on his feet and having good reflexes had saved more than one breakable item from Merlin's accidental wrath, and his impressive (if he did say so himself) physical prowess had often worked just as well in saving himself from excessive inane commentary.

When he determined Merlin to be sufficiently cowed, he tossed his pillow back onto his own bunk and flopped on top of it, not even bothering with the covers. His aching head didn't thank him for all the noise and commotion, but if it got Merlin to be quiet for a while...

"Wow,  _arsehole_ ," Merlin yelled louder than necessary. Arthur winced. So much for that, then. He should know better by now, honestly. Merlin never let Arthur get away with anything if he could help it.

So it shouldn't have been a surprise - and it wasn't, really - when Merlin started talking again seconds later, as if Arthur hadn't done a thing.

"Mate, uni is like one big - "

This time, he yanked Merlin's quilt off his scrawny body and dropped it onto the floor. 

"I'm cold," said Merlin. Arthur spared a moment of concern -  _Merlin has all the body fat of a twig, and it_  is _cold this morning, maybe I shouldn't have_  - before he shook the thoughts out of his head.

"Good."

"That isn't very nice."

 _"You're_  not very nice." Not his greatest comeback, admittedly, and also a lie. Despite his general contrariness and inability to leave Arthur the fuck alone when he wanted to sleep, Merlin spent half his time helping other people; he'd hidden Freya from her abusive boyfriend until he was arrested for harassment, gotten Daegal medicine when he was too sick to move, and even convinced his boss at the med centre to grant Lance an interview. Arthur had seen him honest-to-God helping an old woman cross a street once. It was unbearable, and also made it impossible to hate him or even properly dislike him. Not that Arthur wanted to hate him; he just wished Merlin's kindness extended to basic manners.

Speaking of manners, surely smacking your lips like a cow chewing cud as Merlin seemed to be doing violated some rule of etiquette or other.

"Stop smacking your lips."

"I'm thirsty."

 _"Then get some water._ Honestly, Merlin, it's like you haven't even got a brain in that thick skull of yours."

"Will you get it for me?"

Arthur pinched the bridge of his nose, wondering where he had left his packet of aspirin. Knowing how mornings like this one tended to go, he should have taken one or three as soon as Merlin woke him up. "And why would I do that?" If his voice sounded more like a growl than a question, it was because it had to get around his gritted teeth.

"You're down there, and I'm all the way up here. It's common sense, really," he said. And then he smacked his lips together again. 

"Get it yourself," Arthur snapped. His patience was wafer thin at the best of times, and the past essay-ridden week had worn it to destruction. He felt like Merlin was tearing it bit by bit into strips, like newspaper for papier mâché.

"You sound even more foul-tempered than usual," Merlin commented, sticking his head out to frown at Arthur, speculative. 

"Fuck. Off."

"It's alright, I know why you're so grumpy. You haven't had your breakfast yet."

"I'll have  _you_ for breakfast!" Arthur shouted, belatedly rethinking his word choice as he lunged up to grab Merlin's shoulders and haul him, kicking and complaining, over the side of his bunk. Merlin dropped with a yelp onto the covers Arthur had pulled off earlier.

"There," Arthur said, stepping over his prone roommate to get to his own abandoned bed. "Now you're closer -  _oof!"_

He found himself, inexplicably, on the floor, tangled up in Merlin's covers and Merlin's legs and Merlin's eyes, too, which were suddenly millimetres from his own and storm-blue and smiling. 

"Actually, I'd say we're the about same distance from the fridge," Merlin whispered like it was a secret, his breath puffing soft against Arthur's face. He lifted his closed, slim-fingered fist between them. "Rock paper scissors to see who gets up?"

Arthur laughed, and then they were both laughing, and even though Arthur's head still ached and he still hadn't slept long enough, he couldn't bring himself to be upset that Merlin was his roommate. He dropped his head until it rested against Merlin's, a warm point of intimacy that felt like both a culmination and a contradiction of all contact that had come before it. 

"You're insufferable," he murmured. 

"You love it." Merlin grin softened into something sweet and unbearable, drawing Arthur closer, closer.

 _Yeah, I do,_ Arthur thought, but he wouldn't tell Merlin that, even if the kiss that followed said it for him.

**Author's Note:**

> Merlin has magic for no reason other than I love Modern with Magic AUs, no matter how inconsequential the magic is to the plot.
> 
>  
> 
> Kudos, comments, and constructive critiques are always welcome and much appreciated.
> 
> (I'm greedy for feedback, I admit it.)
> 
> { [come say hi!](http://aithuzah.tumblr.com) }


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